I have made numerous attempts to burn VCDs using Nero with VCD compliant mpegs created by TMPEGenc .

The mpeg source on my hard drive is fine, the Nero burn works fine and the general quality of the VCD is good. However, towards the very end of each VCD I get a couple of minutes of periodic 'blocky' artificats.

Other than this they are perfect but "nearly perfect" isn't good enough.

I've tried two different CD Burners, different source mpegs, different CD-R media all to no avail.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanx

Dave

nero does have a svcd plugin you can buy at their website

if you want better quality

VCD's in their nature are near perfect! as a matter of fact you will notice that when the vcd hits really high action sceens that it will pixelate(go blocky) the more action the more this is noticeable. Depending on how you cut your VCD's will also cause this same issue as you near the area the split occurs. The best methood for splitting your VCD's is to use Tmepg to do a simple demux, then use BBmpeg to remux and make the split for you. The Spliter in Tmpeg sux, and can really mess up an other wise good back up. However if you want really good quality back up I would suggest that you make SVCD's instead. What is one or two more disk when quality is concerned.

Thanks for your replies.

I would still prefer to stick with vcd, for now anyway, 2ndsign. But thanx.

Noxcyber, what you say also makes sense and I'll give it a try. I had heard of quality concerns when splitting files with TMPGenc before.

What I don't understand, though, is why the pixelation only occurs at the END of cd's (i.e. source split in two => pixelation at end of cd1 + the END of cd2!) Surely there is no manipulation with the end of the final split mpeg file on cd2?

What I thought may have been the problem was bit rate problems at the end (outer ring) of the cd but I'm not sure. Anyway I'm using fairly good hardware and can't blame that so if the problem isn't common I'll have to keep thinking.

Thanks again,

Dave

Your problem is common when useing Tmpeg to split the VCD file. I have had this problem many of times untill I started useing BBmpeg to mux and split the files, but I also stop doing VCD's minus the few that I do for the kids seeing that their stand alone DVD player will only play VCD's (Apex AD 600-A) but pixelation is still a problem during high action sceens, but not at the cut.

what speed do you burn at? vcds should be burnt as slowly as possible, because the error protection there for data cds isnt present on them, and loss of data can result in exactly what is happening to you.

I don't that that you ment that post for me, but I burn my SVCD's a 40x seeing that I haven't found any really stable 48x CD-R's and have no problems what so ever with them. (BTW I always use Lite-On)

I burn my svcd's at 24 speed with my plextor and they work perfect.
My friend does it once at 12 speed with his Yamaha and it sucks.
So be careful which burner you use

Try VCDGear
create the image then burn.

I use vcdgear to copy (legally) vcd for internal organisation by ripping the dat to mpeg, then create nero .nrg image, from this image i can burn @48x (benq 24x media) and from 100 cd only c.a. 1 cd ejected! thats 99%.